Confusion about Wights

[TrewynEvenstar]

What the heck are wights? Are they dead kings (which was sort of my impression from Fellowship) or something else? How did they get to be wights? I was checking the appendixes for something about wights, and never found it. Does the Simarillion talk about Wights, or another of the books? I am about six chapters into the Simarillion at the moment.:confused:

[ChildofEru]

ive always thought them to be people (beit elven, men, etc) who had a magical object of great power, im sure that gandalf spoke of other rings not just the 20 rings given among the races, who abused them and wasted away where only their souls remain.
thats my theory.

[Pailan]

"Evil spirits sent to dwell in the Barrow-downs by the Witch-king of Angmar during his wars with the remnant of Arnor, and who remained there long after the realm of Angmar itself had vanished from the world."

I found this apt description over the Encyclopedia of Arda. Hope this helps.

[TrewynEvenstar]

Oh....thanks!

[Darkside Spirit]

Forgive my ignorance, but who the heck was the "Witch-king of Angmar" and why was he at war with "Arnor"? :)

[Wayfarer]

A 'wight' is technically any spirit that is controlling body it has no right to.

The 'barrow' wights were animate corpses, which would have been in preternaturally good shape (i.e. not zombies with parts falkling off). They're 'barrow' wights because they inhabit barrows. As in 'the barrow downs'.

When the rohirrim dismiss aragorn and company as 'elvish wights', it is most likely that they are referring to the posession of mortal mean by unhoused elven spirits.

You could say that the werewolves, being wolves inhabited by fell spirits, are sort of 'wolf wights'. And in the older mythology, trolls (as animate stone creatures) would have been 'stone wights'.

I.E. When we say 'wight' we usually think of the first kind, but there could be many more flavours.


An interesting tidbit: Inolondil once stubbornly insisted on spelling it 'white'.

Darkside, the Witch King was the lord of the Nazgul. He's the wraith that gets all the speaking parts.

Angmar was the kingdom he ruled during the second or third age. It was west of the northernmost misty mountains.

Arnor was the sister country of Gondor. It fell into a state of decay, until only the rangers remembered it's existance. The witch king helped just a tad in this department.

[emplynx]

From http://www.m-w.com

Main Entry: 1wight
Pronunciation: 'wIt
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, creature, thing, from Old English wiht; akin to Old High German wiht creature, thing, Old Church Slavonic vesti thing
Date: before 12th century
: a living being : CREATURE; especially : a human being

[bropous]

Pailan has it right on the money.

And the Witch-King, the Lord of the Nazgul, ruled the "Witch Kingdom of Angmar". On the map in Lord of the Rings, look directly to the North of the ettenmoors, at the far northern end of the Misty Mountains, and you find this text: "Here was of old the Witch-Realm of Angmar". However, since 1988, the maps in LOTR are of such hideously CRAPPY quality it may be hidden in the fold of the book. Why they had to supplant the original map with the current one, which looks like it was drawn with crayon, I'll never know. Shelly Shapiro drew a terrible map.

Read Appendix A, section iii, "The North Kingdom and the Dunedain", starting on page 358 of Return of the King, Darkside Spirit. The northern realms of Arthedain, Cardolan and Rhudaur, as well as the Witch-Kingdom of Angmar and Carn Dum. The entire subject is covered in great detail.

[Wayfarer]

Originally posted by bropous
Why they had to supplant the original map with the current one, which looks like it was drawn with crayon, I'll never know. Shelly Shapiro drew a terrible map.

Huh. The large single volume LOTR I got recently has quite a nice map. It's split into four portions, and has a margin, so nothing is lost in the fold in the book.

With my old trilogy, I finally resorted to pulling the two pages with the map out of the book and taping them together. that looked quite nice.

[bropous]

Ah, Wayfarer. I've not seen the single-volume LotR map. The one I have is about 16x24, taken from a hardback volume of "Unfinished Tales" back in about 1987, and it looks a lot like the original map I had in my well-thumbed and spine-broken paperbacks from the early- to mid-seventies. I got it laminated a long time ago, and I am not sure whether J.R.R. himself did it, but it looks totally different from the Shelly Shapiro knock-off copyrighted from 1988.

I gotta admit that I do love the map shown at the beginning of the Peter Jackson film. Beautiful job on that one. Even shows parts of the lands past the Sea of Rhun.

[Wayfarer]

heh...

I traced out the map from my copy, and put all four secions together, and it's like 24 by 36 inches. Very nice.

[bropous]

Okay, dammit, Wayfarer, ya bested me....by 8x10 inches...but size ain't everything, it's how you USE that map...LOL!

[emplynx]

http://www.taylorcustom.com/localinks/mearth/mearthmap.html has some impressive maps. They have one that prints out on 6 pages, I have it hanging on my walll. It is hard to tape together though!

[bropous]

Hey, thanks for the link, emplynx! Very handy.